Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk
First published in Great Britain in 2003
Copyright © Salley Vickers 2003
The right of Salley Vickers to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780007156474
Ebook Edition © APRIL 2010 ISBN: 9780007379651 Version: 2017-07-26
ONE AFTERNOON IN MID MARCH, WHEN THE green-white snowdrops had blown ragged under the tangled hawthorn hedges, the pale constellations of primroses had ceased to be a novelty, and the more robust, sun-reflecting daffodils were in their heyday, an old half-timbered Traveller van drove into the village of Great Calne. There was, in fact, no other Calne, great or small, in the county of Devon; or if there ever had been, it had long since vanished into the indifferent encroachments of the moor. Great Calne stands at the edge of Dartmoor, one of the ancient tracts of land which still, in the twenty-first century, lends out its grazing free to the common people of England – though it must be said that the ‘common people’ are something of a scarcity these days.
Sam Noble, out walking his bitch, Daphne, named for his mother’s still-born twin sister, and having nothing better to do, watched with naked curiosity as the driver of the car negotiated the corner by the Stag and Badger – where, thanks to the pub’s garden wall, the passage was tight and drivers often came a cropper. He was mildly disappointed when nothing untoward occurred. Sam’s was not an especially malicious nature, but Great Calne did not provide the thrills he had once been used to. Before his retirement, Sam had been a film director, and had had hopes of winning the Palme d’Or at Cannes with a film about women jockeys which had subsequently made waves. However, for the past five years he had lived in Great Calne, where the principal excitement was provided by Morning Claxon’s plans to transform the tearooms into an alternative health centre.
There was another witness to the arrival of the car, a less obvious one. Johnny Spence had, as usual, skipped school and it wasn’t safe for him to show his face till after four o’clock. During the stranger’s arrival, Johnny was hiding, as was his habit, in the upper branches of a yew tree which spread its antique shade over the churchyard wall and on to the garden of the Reverend Meredith Fisher, the latest occupant of the rectory. Johnny, whose researches were thorough, knew that the lady vicar was off doing her counselling training down in Plymouth, and would not be back before six. So he was free to watch the old Morris – which from his calculations must be worth a bit – being brought skilfully round the corner and into the front garden of Spring Cottage, which since the death of Emily Pope had been let out by her daughter, Nicky, to holidaymakers.
Emily Pope had been dead long enough for Nicky to discover that Spring Cottage did not let easily. So far, it had been rented by a couple of families who complained about the out-of-date facilities, and the damp. One woman, from Clapham, claimed to have found toadstools. It had been something of a relief to receive a request via Nicky’s new website – www.moorvacs.co.uk – from the gentleman who had described himself as ‘a writer in need of a peaceful situation within easy walking distance of shops and pub’. Spring Cottage filled the bill nicely. Writers were notoriously careless people – very likely this one would smoke in the bedroom, but then again he was a man, and mightn’t notice that the back plates on the kitchen hob were dodgy, or that the avocado suite in the bathroom (once the pride of Emily Pope) was now badly out of fashion. Nicky, in the first flush of holiday letting, had splashed out on a Norwegian wood-burning stove, sold to her by a travelling salesman who had hinted at further attractions. These had never materialised, and the stove, prominent in the website details, filled the downstairs rooms with smoke when the wind was in the wrong direction. The Clapham woman had complained about this too; but Nadia Fawns, who ran an antiques store over in Backen, had sold Nicky a couple of convector heaters which she hoped would put paid to the heating problems.